UNDERSTANDING THE PATH OF SOCIETAL CHANGE REQUIRES A FOCUS ON THE FRONTIER: THE CASE OF GENDER PARITY IN THE APS
The road towards greater gender equality in Australian Public Service is long. Not as long as in the private sector, but long nonetheless.
It is easy to forgot that marriage used to mean women had to leave public service. Not men, of course. The rule has been thankfully relegated to a curiosity of history, even if its impact has not.
Change towards gender equality in the APS has been, for many, frustratingly slow. Slowness is a reality of most societal level change. Society is big and unyielding. It does not shift easily. The APS, with around one hundred and fifty thousand staff, is no different.
The impatience slow change creates is understandable. Once a direction for societal change has been set, it is natural to want to get ‘there’ as quickly as possible. This is particularly true when addressing longstanding inequalities.
Planning for, and assessing the progress of, change in these circumstances is difficult. For one thing, we often do not have a precise measurable end point in mind. This does not mean the goal is unclear. In the case of the APS, the goal is clear – gender equality. But the concept is broad and not precisely measurable. Progress is in the eye of the beholder.
The apparent slowness of overall change can also mask what is happening at the margin. Understanding progress requires a sense of the frontier of change as well as what is happening ‘on average’. It is the frontier that tells us most about the dynamics of change.
So, given all this, how is the APS tracking?
Attention to date has often centred on a more measurable element of gender equality – gender parity at senior levels.
As recently as 2002, data from the Australian Public Service Commission (used throughout), showed a stark gender imbalance at the top of the APS. Women made up, for example, a little over 30 per cent of SES Band 1 positions, a little over 20 per cent of SES Band 2 positions, and marginally more than 15 percent of SES Band 3 positions. For EL1s and EL2s, these figures were just under 40 per cent and 30 per cent respectively.
To place this in context, women represented roughly 53 per cent of the APS staff overall in 2002.
Move forward 20 years and the story is different. In 2021, more than 60 per cent of APS staff were women. For SES, women Band 1s were just over 50 per cent, Band 2s touched 40 per cent and Band 3s were just below 40 per cent. Women had reached parity with men at the EL2 level and made up around 55 per cent of EL1s.
Eye-balling the relevant chart in the Government’s latest Gender Equality Strategy 2021-26 - Realising the Benefits for All suggests slow and steady progress towards more equal gender representation. A solid, if not not spectacular, success.
A deeper sense of change is given by looking beyond the published charts at how numbers have changed in two periods – 2003 to 2010 and 2011 to 2021.
From 2003 to 2010, the number of SES (Bands 1, 2 and 3) in the APS rose by around 1000. This increase was split almost identically between men and women. For executive level staff (EL 1 and 2), numbers increased by a little under 18000. Women were a clear majority of the increase, rising by almost 10000 over the period.
In the following decade (2011 to 2021) overall numbers rose much more slowly. SES numbers rose by around 150 and ELs by roughly 1500. When I asked a small selection of current and former senior public servants for a view on how these numbers split, the instinctive reaction from most was that the frontier of change was leading us further away from parity.
So, what actually happened?
For SES, numbers of women rose by around 450 while men declined by almost 300. A similar trend existed for ELs, if marginally weaker. There were almost 4000 more women in EL ranks at the end of the period, and around 2500 fewer men. Overall, women now make up around 60 per cent of public service employees.
Looking more closely at the frontier reveals a consistent trend for the SES cohort. Numbers of SES women have risen, and numbers of SES men have declined, in each of the last 5 years. For ELs, numbers of women have grown over the last six years. Numbers of EL men fell in each of the first four of these years. In the last two years, numbers of EL men grew but much more slowly than women.
As superannuation ads remind us, past performance is no guarantee of future performance. New data could well show another shift. But, as it stands, the data shows a substantial frontier change in the APS gender balance.
Realising the Benefits for All acknowledges these shifts quietly. The relevant Ministers point to “significant progress” in their introduction. The report itself concluded that “women are represented well at all classification levels”, while (rightly) pointing to large differences in outcomes across individual job categories and across departments.
Beyond parity, significant gender equality issues remain. The APS’s new gender strategy has a much stronger focus on capturing the organisational benefits of diversity. It highlights concerns remain over pay equality and superannuation outcomes, and the need to support all employees to balance work and family obligations. Addressing bullying and harassment is a key strategy. These are healthy and important priorities.
Looking forward, however, the frontier data on parity suggest three additional issues for the APS to consider as it implements Realising the Benefits for All.
First, there would be merit APS should recognising and celebrating more fulsomely what it has achieved. Change is hard. The APS has come along way since the 2013 report from the (then) ANZSOG Institute for Governance at the University of Canberra – Not Yet 50/50: Barriers to the Progress of Senior Women in the Australian Public Service. Indeed, for the APS overall, it is hard to see how the frontier of change could be occurring more quickly.
Second, the APS might be wise to take the opportunity to describe its goals around gender parity more precisely. One approach would be to set and monitor a ‘Goldilocks’ range within which the APS feels that its parity objective is met. Without this, if current trends are to continue, there is potential for one imbalance to be replaced unconsciously by another.
Third, a better understanding is needed of why men are leaving the service. The APS needs to be a place where high performing women and men (indeed, all genders) see a future. While falling numbers of senior men may simply reflect an age profile, it is a potentially unhealthy trend, and warrants further investigation.
One approach might be to reprise the 2013 ANZSOG commissioned report to provide an robust independent foundation for further consideration by the APS. Individual agency heads, who are ultimately responsible for implement the government’s strategy, might also wish to commission work on the frontier of their own organisation to inform next steps.
More broadly, the path of gender parity in the APS emphasises the importance of taking a robust and holistic view to assessing societal change. A particular focus is needed on understanding what is happening at the frontier. Failure to do so, runs the risk of missing when we should celebrate progress and properly consider what might be needed in the future.
The author would like to thank Sally Moyle from the ANU Gender Institute for her helpful and enlightening comments and Bryan Palmer for his analysis of the APSC data. The views expressed are my own.
Sean Innis is Principal of Damala St Consulting. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Studies Institute at ANU and Chair of Public Policy at ADC Forum.
First published in The Mandarin on 20 July 2022.